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The View From on High

By Dean Robinson August 18, 2011 6:05 amAugust 18, 2011 6:05 am

Massimo Vitali

It looks like the great prow of the world, steering us into the void. Or if you prefer something more in keeping with the genius loki of the place (fjord, land of the Norsemen), a real-world version of Hlidskjalf, the seat in Asgard from which all-wise Odin was able to see everything.

If it was once thus, then the site has since been through a kind of conversion: now it’s Preikestolen, or Pulpit Rock, a Norwegian destination for tens of thousands of sightseers annually and the subject of the magazine’s most recent Look. The picture above is another view.

The spot offers a perspective that isn’t achieved easily. To get there, the photographer Massimo Vitali hiked six hours to reach the top. Here, directly below, is a picture he took of the terrain he had to traverse, followed by a self-portrait taken along the way. The photos after that, taken by Vitali’s assistant, Giovanni Romboni, show two pilgrims celebrating their elevated status.

In a blog post a few months ago, following Vitali’s first contribution to Look (he’s now the second photographer to make a repeat appearance in these pages), which captured one of the last blast-offs of the shuttle program, I mentioned this recurring fancy I have to climb into his pictures, “Purple Rose of Cairo”-like, and bask in their sun-drenched leisure scenes. I’m not so sure with this one; I worry I’d give in to the acrophobe’s impulse and take a 2,000-foot Brodie. Better (for me, anyway) to keep to the life-is-a-beach philosophy, and dive only into pictures like this one, hanging near Courtney Cox’s Malibu kitchen.

Bruce Grierson wrote this week’s cover story about Ellen Langer, a Harvard psychologist who has conducted experiments that involve manipulating environments to turn back subjects’ perceptions of their own age.Read more…